Category: Ron Goulart

Steele Wyoming by Ron Goulart

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Steele Wyoming by Ron Goulart (F&SF, March 1980) opens with a group of “Outside” down-and-outs roasting a dog for dinner (“Tastes pretty good” . . . “It’s the wild oregano gives it zing”). One the group, Otto, claims he invented Steele Wyoming, a revolutionary guardbot, and proceeds to tell his tale of riches to rags.
This account begins with him rescuing a female friend, Bev, the owner of a pest extermination company called Zapbug (a running joke is that her sonic repellents cause Otto continual problems) from a group of Poverty Commandos and Suicide Cadets who are attacking her mansion. When Otto later tries to convince her to give up her career for him, she says he’ll need to amass greater riches first.
This subsequently leads Otto to create Steele Wyoming, which he then demonstrates to Carlos, a contact at NRA (National Robot & Android):

Carlos chuckled. “He’s very impressive, amigo.”
“Designed to scare the crap out of any looter, rapist, housebreaker or other unwanted Outsider.”
“Steele Wyoming, huh? Catchy.”
“A cowboy name.” I’d gotten butsub on my fingers somehow. Wiping them on the plyocloth, I tossed it aside and one of my little servobots came scooting over to gather it up.
Carlos, slowly, circled Steele Wyoming. “I assume he’s lethal as well as frightening?”
“Tell him, Steele.”
“First off, let me say howdy, Mr. Trinidad, sir,” drawled the big android in his rumbling Old West voice. He reached a huge horny hand up to tip his highcrown stetson. “I kin be lethal or I kin merely stun varmints. Depends on how the nice folks who owns me wants the deal to go down.”
Carlos laughed, pleased. “He’s terrific, amigo.”
“What I figured,” I said while Carlos stood gazing up at the seven foot tall cowboy android, “is that to a great many people in America, even in this year of 2020, the cowboy remains a symbol of honesty, dedication, law and order.”
Steele adjusted his hat on his head.
“That is surely true.”  p. 86

The rest of the story (spoiler) sees the homicidal results of Wyoming’s trigger happy attitude1 (starting with a noisy subrock millionaire neighbour, and followed by the three policemen who see Wyoming dumping the body). Further complications result from Bev’s infidelity.
Amusing stuff.
*** (Good). 4,750 words. Story link.

1. One wonders if Wyoming’s lethality was modelled on Clint Eastwood’s movies of the time (the spaghetti Westerns and Dirty Harry series).

The Sword Swallower by Ron Goulart

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Sword Swallower by Ron Goulart (F&SF, November 1967) is one of his ‘Ben Jolsen/Chameleon Corps’ stories, and opens with Jolsen being briefed about the disappearance of senior military men from the Barnum War Cabinet. Jolsen’s boss Mickens suspects the persons responsible are pacifists objecting to the colonization of the Terran planets by Barnum, and he sends Jolsen to Esperanza (a cemetery planet) in the guise of an elderly technocrat called Leonard Gabney. When Jolsen arrives there, his task is to slip a truth drug to an Ambassador Kinbrough and find out where the missing men are.
The rest of the story follows his various adventures on the planet, which include meeting a female agent, getting shaken down when he arrives at a health spa, meeting the Ambassador and drugging him, an attempt on his life by the health spa attendant who extorted him, tracking down the Ambassador’s contact (Son Brewster Jr., a not very good protest singer), and so on (this takes you about two thirds of the way through the story).
To be honest the plot is irrelevant, as it’s just a framework for Goulart’s telegraphic and occasionally semi-amusing prose, such as when he steps out of the air taxi on arrival at the health spa:

Jolson stepped out of the cruiser and into a pool of hot mud. He sank down to chin level, rose up and noticed a square-faced blond man squatting and smiling on the pool’s edge.
The man extended a hand. “We start things right off at Nepenthe. Shake. That mud immersion has taken weeks of aging off you already, Mr. Gabney. I’m Franklin T. Tripp, Coordinator and Partial Founder.”
Jolson gave Tripp a muddy right hand. His cruiser pilot had undressed him first, so he’d been expecting something.
“I admire your efficiency, sir.”
“You know, Mr. Gabney,” Tripp confided in a mint-scented voice, “I’m nearly sixty myself. Do I look it?”
“Forty at best.”
“Every chance I get I come out here and wallow.”  p. 213 (World’s Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)

This is pleasant enough magazine filler but I’ve no idea what it is doing in a ‘Best of the Year’ annual, and I doubt anyone will remember much about the story a couple of hours after they have read it. I also thought, for a piece of semi-satirical fluff (the peaceniks, the incomprehensible slang used in the club, the protest songs, etc.) it’s longer than it needs to be.
** (Average). 9,800 words.

Lunatic at Large by Ron Goulart

Posted on by Paul Fraser 2 Comments on Lunatic at Large by Ron Goulart

Lunatic at Large by Ron Goulart (F&SF, February 1977) is one of his ‘Jose Silvera’ stories about the planet-hopping writer-for-hire. This one opens with him and a new client, the actress Mary Elizabeth Trowbridge, arriving at a film premiere on Barafunda naked in her aircar:

“And let’s see who’s in the aircar which is just now landing on the A-List landing yard!” boomed a voice immediately outside their cabin windows.
Silvera found himself staring into the lens of a robot video camera and the bright blue eyes of a grinning lizard man in a purple dinner jacket. “Oops,” said Silvera. “Black the windows, stupe.”
“Miss Trowbridge,” replied the voice of the aircar, “had earlier expressed a wish to see the myriad stars of the Barnum System night sky whilst being—”
“That was a prior mood,” said Silvera. “Black the damn windows.”
“It looks like our beloved novelist, Mary Elizabeth Trowbridge, spread-eagled under a dark saturnine man I don’t recognize, folks,” boomed the lizard announcer.  p. 87

The above gives you an idea of the tone of the story, which is mostly about Silvera attempting to recoup an overdue payment from a lizardman literary agent called Mazda. Mixed into this are the various manoeuvrings of the KAML (Kill All Monarchs League) and the possibility that the planet’s ruler, Prince Lorenzo, may be an android. All this is mostly irrelevant though, as the plot is pretty much an excuse to string several amusing scenes together (my favourite is probably the fight scene that takes place in a pub after Silvera smirks at a dandy who “playfully inserted the lighted table candle into [the] handy orifice of yonder serving wench android.”
Minor stuff but quite funny (if you don’t mind the rude humour).
*** (Good). 5,550 words.